Renaud Jolivet has always been drawn to nature's big questions. He majored in physics because he wanted to work on cosmological and astronomical enigmas. "During my studies, these fields of science did not prove to be a good fit; instead, I became interested in the interface between physics and biology", he says. While looking for a PhD position, he stumbled into neuroscience. Jolivet changed his focus from the vast universe outside of us to the constrained area inside our skulls, from the billions of stars in a galaxy to the billions of cells in the brain. Despite the change of subject, he still works on one of the most important unanswered scientific questions: “How does the seat of our consciousness, our brain, function?”

Perfect place

Jolivet worked at the University of Geneva and the physics research centre CERN when he was asked to deliver a lecture at the Maastricht Centre for Systems Biology (MaCSBio). Here he found something he was lacking in his Swiss research. “MaCSBio has expertise in metabolic modelling (modelling the metabolism through mathematics), something that is not very common in neuroscience research. Furthermore, CERN, which studies elementary particles, is not the perfect place for brain research. So, moving to Maastricht felt natural because it benefited my research and my career.”

In Maastricht, the young professor will focus on three lines of research that involve neural engineering as well as computational neuroscience. “We are working on a brand-new kind of neuronal brain interface that might one day help people with epilepsy. The second area of research, which I began at CERN, examines novel approaches to brain imaging that take advantage of the physics of both MRI and positron emission tomography. The third line of research involves creating mathematical models of how the brain processes information. We especially look at the role of non-neuronal cells. These cells make up half of our brain; nonetheless, we know only little about them.”